How to: Sort Records in Case-Sensitive ( ASCII) Order

Microsoft Access sorts records in ascending or descending order without regard to case. However, you can use a user-defined function in a query to sort text data by its ASCII character values. This results in a case-sensitive order.

The following table demonstrates how the ascending order in Microsoft Access differs from a case-sensitive order.

Pre-Sort Order	Ascending Order	Case-Sensitive Order
c	A	A
D	a	B
a	B	C
d	b	D
B	C	a
C	c	b
A	D	c
b	d	d

Although the results in the Ascending Order column might at first appear somewhat unpredictable, they are not. In the Ascending Order column, "a" appears before "A," and " B" appears before "b." This occurs because, when evaluated as text values, "A" = "a" and "B" = "b," whether lowercase or uppercase. Access takes into account the original order of the values. In the Pre-Sort Order column, "a" precedes "A" and "B" precedes "b."

When the case-sensitive sort operation is performed, the text values are replaced with their ASCII values. For example, A = 65, a = 97, B = 66, b = 98, and so on.

The following user-defined function can be used to sort data in case-sensitive order.

Function StrToHex(S As Variant) As Variant 
 Dim Temp As String, I As Integer 
 
 If VarType(S) <> 8 Then 
 
 StrToHex = S 
 Else 
 Temp = "" 
 For I = 1 To Len(S) 
 Temp = Temp & Format(Hex(Asc(Mid(S, I, 1))), "00") 
 Next I 
 StrToHex = Temp 
 End If 
End Function

Using the StrToHex Function

The preceding user-defined function, StrToHex, can be called from a query. When you pass the name of the sort field to this function, it will sort the field values in case-sensitive order. The following steps illustrate how to use the function.

1. Create a query from which you will call this function.

2. In the Show Table dialog box, click the table that you want to sort, and then click Add.

3. Drag the fields you want to the grid.

4. In the first blank column, in the Field row, type Expr1: StrToHex([SortField]).StrToHex is the user-defined function you created earlier. SortField is the name of the field that contains the case-sensitive values.

5. In the Sort cell, click Ascending or Descending.If you choose ascending order, values beginning with uppercase letters will appear before those that begin with lowercase letters. Applying a descending-order sort does the opposite.

6. Switch to Datasheet view.Access displays the records, sorted in case-sensitive order.